On Monday, 4th December, 1922 the Trade Facilities and Loans Guarantee (Money) was to be considered by the House of Commons in Committee under the Chairmanship of Mr James Hope. The Motion before the House was a composite and complicated one and the Debate did not start until 11 o'clock that night. Several Opposition Members asked a) that the several items should be dealt with individually and b) that decisions of such moment should not be made late at night when Members were tired and, consequently, unable perhaps to make sound judgements. But the Debate went ahead as planned.
The first subject was The Trade Facilities Act, followed by discussion on the loan to Austria and then went on to (c) the Treasury guarantee of interest on a loan for public works in the Sudan. It was on this last item that Saklatvala subsequently spoke, at about 3 o'clock in the morning of the 5th December.
Mr Baldwin, Chancellor of the Exchequer in introducing the Motion said of Item (c) "It is to guarantee a loan to be raised by the Government of the Sudan for completing the great dam which is to aid in the irrigation of a large part of the Sudan. The scheme is of greater magnitude than was originally contemplated and like all large schemes prices have increased and the estimates are considerably beyond any that were considered reasonable when the scheme was first propounded; but it has been investigated more than once recently by an expert sent out by the Treasury to advise, and his report is that, even after the expenditure of this increased sum, when the scheme is finished, the benefit to that country will be so great, that there should be no doubt of the Sudan itself being able to pay out of its revenues the interest required on the loan. The whole object, or the main object is to enable cotton-growing to be proceeded with in the Sudan. The Sudan, I am told, is one of the best fields in the world for growing long-staple cotton, and I am also told, by those who know the cotton trade, that there is a real fear that the supply of raw cotton in the world today is not sufficient for the world's trade, and unless immediate steps are taken to increase the growing capacity of the world for cotton, great disaster will overcome, if not the cotton trade of the world, at any rate the cotton trade of this country, which is dependent entirely on imported cotton. I am told that the area that it is proposed forthwith to irrigate is such that it will be possible to grow 70,000 bales for shipment each year to Lancashire. But as it may be possible when the dam is finished to bring under irrigation a vastly increased area to that already proposed, there seems no reason why the Sudan in...perhaps the not too distant future, will bid fair to become one of the great cotton-growing districts of the world....."
Walton Newbold (Communist) spoke first on the Austrian issue and then took up the subjct of the Sudanese loan. Throughout quite a long speech he was barracked and interrupted; when he appealed to the Chair to keep order to enable him to speak, the Chair admonished him for criticising the Chair! In spite of the general schoolboy rowdiness he managed to continue. He said: "Hon. Members do not crowd those benches and support these Resolutions in the interests of liberty, in the interests of equality, in the interests of justice, but in the interests of the Stock Exchange, in the interests of the bankers, in the interests of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce (interruption) of the bill-brokers, of the cotton manufacturers of the whole capitalist class that you are rolling up in your forces upon those benches. It is noticeable that this barrage project has the approval of a Committee presided over, I believe, by Sir R.M.Kindersley. Sir R.M.Kindersley, curiously enough, happens to be the Chairman of Lazard Bros.; Lazard Bros., curiously enough, have half their share capital held by S.Pearson & Sons and Clive Pearson. These people are the building contractors engaged upon the dam."
At 2.40 a.m., Commander Kenworthy (Labour) stood to move an Amendment, namely to leave out paragraph (c). He said: "The Sudan is not the only country which has long-staple cotton ... Sudan is not a safe field for British investment. I would not put my money there and I would not advise anyone else to put theirs. Egypt today is a smouldering volcano. ...The regime of martial law, which I am sorry to see is supported by British bayonets, is bound, sooner or later, to lead to trouble in that country. In these circumstances I regard it as very foolish to guarantee loans in that country .... and it is not fair to ask the British taxpayer to guarantee this large sum of money....The employment supplied in this country will not be at all comparable with the amount of money we are to guarantee. It may and will provide...employment in the Sudan, but at the present moment one of the grievances that is felt up and down the country is that our Government has been extremely slow and lax in providing useful work for our own unemployed."
Mr P.Johnston (Labour), one of th Scottish M.P.s then asked if the Sudan project was to be in private or in State hands. "Is the British public," he asked, "being asked to guarantee large sums in order to ensure profit for private business in this country?"
The night and morning were far advanced when Saklatvala rose to make his contribution to the Debate.
"I wish to call the attention of the Committee to the dangerous principle underlying the proposals put forward tonight, and I strongly take the view that the hon. and gallant Member for Central Hull (Lt.Commander Kenworthy) has put to the committee regarding this Sudanese scheme. There was a time when there were two parties in the House, both of which were interested in making loans and monetary grants. One was interested in taking up one group and the other was interested in taking up another group. There is now a third party, and it has come to analyse the fundamental principle of these enterprises. We want to know something more than the people in the past wanted to know. It is very curious. We have sat here today a round of the clock (It was 4.a.m. when he finished speaking). and we have not had one word about the glories of private enterprise. Private enterprise has a wonderful power of abrogating rights. It puts forward schemes for the benefit of humanity, but asks the unemployed to strive and fight when it is a question of really being enterprising and adventurous and taking risks. Then private enterprise is gone. From Plymouth to Pimlico there is not a word of private enterprise. I submit that the plan as put forward by the Government today in the shape of a guarantee is a worse burden upon the taxpayer and, if I may be allowed to say so, a more dishonest burden than if it were one thing or another. [An hon. Member: "You pay your money and you take your choice."] If it were private enterprise and the private enterprise was asking the sanction of this House to invest money, and if we were merely feeling angry at them at securing in this House a share of future profits, that would be one way of getting the profit. If we are placing the burden upon the taxpayer and telling the taxpayer to take the profit, or lose out of it, that is another thing; but this clever device of a guarantee means that if profit ensues, private enterprise will get it, and if it is a loss the taxpayer will pay it. We are not so simple. We see through the scheme. It is a very unsound looking scheme of guaranteeing. It means the profits are mine and the losses are yours.
There is another point in regard to the former part of this Resolution. We were not told if any unconstitutional guarantee was exacted from the borrower, from the Sudan. We were told that if this House guaranteed 3� million pounds to begin with, and subsequently went further into it, this country required 70,000 bales to begin with of long staple Egyptian cotton. Why, may I ask, do we feel so certain that cotton grown in somebody else's country, by the people of Sudan, shall ever fall into our lap as our own property. We have not even got a Parliament in Sudan to smother and blackmail, and this is an unconstitutional law just as in the case of Vienna. We shall be told, perhaps three years hence in this House to sanction an expedition to Sudan to save our guarantee. That instrument of blackmail upon any Parliament in the Sudan does not exist. The only weapon that does exist in the hands of the loan controllers is the British Army and the British Navy, and we shall one day be told that we have pledged our honour, we have granted the loan, we have promised safety to the investors, and we shall want to sink a few hundred millions to butcher the Sudanese to get our wretched money. We are engaged in a new departure of human butchery. That is, again, history repeating itself. What right has this House to take it for granted that the poor Sudanese shall bend their necks and backs and go on growing cotton year after year? There is one very serious point. In the midst of starvation, hunger, distress, and death, many of the unemployed in this country heard the hollow talk of sympathy. Where is that sympathy tonight? It is all very well to give us misleading speeches when introducing new schemes, but we have got before us our past history. Let us know how in the past this country has been misled into the cultivation of raw material abroad, and how the workers of this country have been cheated out of the little work they had. Take jute. The workers of this country were always told that by the production of jute in Bengal, and by the British Government possessing it, the work of the workers in the Dundee works would be guaranteed for ever. At no time have the workers been so cheated by those who have the militaristic control. They were told that the people of India would never use for their own consumption more than 500,000 bales of jute. The people of Dundee used to work about five to six times that quantity of jute in the Dundee mills. But in 1921 the Dundee mills were compelled to do their work on only about 600,000 bales, while the jute mills in Bengal, where the jute grows, worked upon 4,300,000 bales, or seven times as much as the Dundee workers. The workers in India were overworking, and the workers in Dundee had to shut up their shop. [Hon, Members:"Why not?"] I do not say why not, but when you were talking about jute production in India, did you tell the workers of Dundee it was to stop their work and start it in India? I am not asking whether yes, or whether no. I am asking you something more difficult than that. I am asking you to be honest. I am asking you to take the full history of finer cotton in India. You started the production of finer cotton in India, and what happened? Today, with the larger quantities of cotton, the Indian mills not only want to extend their industry, but demand that a prohibitive duty shall be placed on their goods. You might again ask, "Why not?" That is not the question we are discussing tonight. Do you, then, tell the workers of Lancashire that one of the possibilities of growing finer cotton in India would be to curtail their work and increase their unemployment?
"I ask you today - I am not indulging in larger questions, but taking this matter by itself - I am asking you today as men of the world, why do you not realise that this very cotton, this long-staple cotton growing in the Sudan, will be a temptation to some of you, which in the past you never had the strength of character to resist, to take Sudanese slave labour and start your spinning mills in the Sudan? You will do it as you have done it all over the world. You will grow long-staple cotton, and then when you come to grips with the operatives of Lancashire, you, as you have done in the past, will be the people who will start cotton mills in the Sudan and shut up Lancashire. That is your history, which you cannot deny. You want to cover it up by talking of guarantees and investments and so on. I have heard of a gentle scheme where a paper was read by a Government expert sent out by the Manchester University, about a detailed plan of improving the staple cotton in India, and one part of it was that the Indian farmer, the ryot, does not count. He is of no account, and one of the clauses of that scheme is that if the farmer fails to mix his seeds and spoils the profit of some Lancashire "boss," there shall be imprisonment for him up to 6 months".
The CHAIRMAN: " I cannot see the relevancy of all this."
Mr SAKLATVALA: "I was just showing the possibilities of what will happen in the Sudan. I am now coming directly to the point. In performing these two enterprises, you will have to fall back on human beings in the Sudan. You will have to rely upon their labour to grow cotton out of Nature. You will fall back on your methods of exacting toil out of human beings to suit your profits, and you will then introduce similar Clauses of imprisonment for farmers of the Sudan, and everything to secure you long-staple cotton. If you succeed you will pocket the profits. If you fail, you will not only throw the burden on the taxpayers, but out of revenge for your failure, you will lead this country into another murderous expedition against the Sudanese. That is the history of private enterprise guaranteed by Governments. The guarantee to the Sudan means the guarantee and nothing else. You will then come to the House, if we permit you, with long-drawn faces one day and say, 'The position is critical, but our High Commissioner is taking the situation in hand and he wants a few battleships and a few battalions.' We know that behind the thin end of this wedge of guarantees lies the same old seeking of profits, not in an enterprising spirit, but in an unenterprising spirit, so that if you succeed in the gamble the profit and the money and the glory are yours, and, if you fail, woe and death to those poor fellows in the country you tried to get, and the taxpayer who has to pay, not only for your loss, but for expeditions of revenge.
Not only that, but as sure as the sun rises you will in process of time go further into the Sudan and you yourselves will be the bosses and the owners of the raw material. You will put factories there, you will exploit the labour with the positive design of ill-treating and degrading labour in this country. [Laughter] I can see when the smiles are falsely put on. The rt. hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer answered many questions of triviality, but when he was touching on certain principles he forgot them, or perhaps he was asked to forget them by his colleagues. The hon. Member for Motherwell (Mr Newbold) put forward two glaring instances which, apart from any possible emotion in them, are certainly an underlying principle which generally, in outward life, you seem to discourage and discountenance, but which, in this very favourite appeal of the Government, you seem not only to encourage and tolerate, but even to patronise and practice. The Member for Motherwell pointed out that here, in the name of the League of Nations, a gentleman who is going to be a beneficiary himself recommends a loan, and in the case of the Sudan, in the case of this contract, a gentleman who, directly and indirectly, is going to be a beneficiary, as a contractor, whether his tender was lowest or highest or "middlest", that does not matter - one who in principle was to be the beneficiary by a contract is himself the inspirer of the whole scheme of giving a nice little guarantee. We do not want your money we only want your guarantee! Day after day this slow degradation goes on. It is the demoralisation of public institutions which has brought down all nations. In the Sudan scheme the Government ought to have taken precautions that those who are connected with reporting on the scheme, recommending it, or having anything to do with it, had no connection with the profits. The Government has failed to see to that. Why did the enterprising free enterprise suddenly collapse in its spirit of enterprise, and make it necessary for us to sit here since eleven o'clock? Why did not the Government call on their favourite cry of "private enterprise"? Did the Government make an attempt in the easy style of Governmental parliamentary attempts of asking their friends what their wishes and desires were in this matter? Were they told by private enterprise that it saw a great future in it and a great risk, and that it would be clever to shift the risk on to the taxpayer who is generally a mug? That part requires to be explained by the Government, not only explicitly, but even candidly, and having no regard to any secrecy between any negotiators and themselves.
This House has a right to know the nature of any consultations, and the persons with whom those consultations were carried on. If no consultations took place, then the supporters of the Government are bound in duty to tell their constituents, now that the General Election is over and the votes have been secured, that they forgot to go to the private enterprisers. There must be something in it. Neither the Chancellor of the Exchequer nor the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, so far as I am aware, is either by education or association a cotton expert. I do not believe that if a bale of Sudanese cotton were placed in the hands of either of those Gentlemen they would be able to say it was Sudanese cotton, or a piece of wool or anything else. I do not believe that either of them would be able to test the long staple or short staple article. I do not, therefore, believe that the whole scheme originated in their heads. They told us there was a deputation, but that was last year. They are a new Government, and they tell us that, by some divine inspiration, not financial investigation, they came to the conclusion that long-staple cotton was grown in the Sudan. Never mind about the methods of growing it, unemployment in Lancashire is going to be less. But the Government cannot make us accept such a doctrine unless they take us into their confidence and tell us the full psychological evolution.
"We have heard of a deputation last year, and we see suddenly in this Session a Bill. We see two different and separate things in front of us. We have a very incomplete and undigested Bill about fine staple cotton in the Sudan, but without any information or any explanation. We heard of the deputation, but how the presnt occupants of office took up suddenly, in the midst of the difficulties of the Irish Constitution, this question of Sudanese cotton, and what experts they consulted in the matter I hardly know. What promise did they get from the Manchester Chamber of Commerce and from the Plymouth private enterprises as to how much money they were prepared to put in. There are schemes put forward by the public, by private companies and corporations, and these companies and corporations came to Parliament to ask for sanction, they apply for guarantees, and for security of interest, but nothing of that sort seems to have happened in the case of Sudanese cotton. We have not heard today that the private enterprisers of Britain are so dead that they are not able to stump up 3� millions. We have not heard yet that the rt. hon. Members who support the Government, and who only last week were burning with zeal about the agriculturists and farmers, have undertaken to take some of the unemployed farmers of this country and send them to the Sudan. We have not heard from the Government that the present unemployed in Lancashire has been due to a want of long staple cotton and the market for the yarn made out of the long staple cotton. We have heard from the Government only a week ago, that stocks of cotton yarn made out of long staple are still lying in the warehouses of Manchester, Birkenhead and Liverpool. What do you want a further 70,000 bales of long staple cotton for if you have not been able to spin that which you have and the cotton you did spin you are not willing to sell because you do not get your pound of flesh? How the Government, as the impartial arbiter between the workers and the financiers, between the State and private enterprise, suddenly came to this conclusion will remain a miracle and a mystery unless they explain it more fully than they have done. It may be a miracle and mystery to their friends, but it shall not be so to their opponents. When we saw the mere whispers of this Bill in the air, when we heard the gentle hints given to us tonight by the Prime Minister that it was something about which the least said the soonest mended, and that we sit up after eleven, the whole cat jumped out of the bag at once. Two issues spring out of the Sudanese cotton. Number one issue is that the Government has been made to think about this scheme, and the second is that either they are unable to explain the details of the business or they thought it was a matter about which a long talk must not be permitted and that it might be got through in about half an hour. But as I have said, this House is entirely a new House. In this House you have not only human ears, but you have an intellectual microscope, and those little invisible germs - I do not mean the Members of the Opposition -"
The Chairman: The hon.Member must approach the question of this loan."
Mr Saklatvala: The germs are now becoming visible in their whole alarming view to the public gaze. I submit that the whole idea underlying this Sudan scheme and to push this Bill through at this time, when we were least expecting to push it through, is to establish, what every Government generally desires to do, a precedent and a pledge, so that throughout the coming Sessions this little nest will come up. I still submit that the scheme as propounded by the Government is a scheme barren of the fundamental elements of justice. The scheme is based upon one fact, as if it were a truism, that it is going to produce 70,000 bales of long staple cotton."
The Chairman: It is not in order to repeat the same argument.
Mr Saklatvala: I am submitting, Mr Hope, that from parallel examples of similar hopefulness of the growing of long staple cotton in other parts of the world, thousands of pounds have been wasted, and the cotton that has been ultimately grown has been neither short staple nor long staple."
After a short intervention from Mr Shinwell (Labour) the House divided at 4 a.m. Ayes 172. Noes.88. (A total of 260 Members out of 643; such is the democratic process).
On the 10th December, The Observer reported:- "Mr Saklatvala, who is better acquainted with the grammar of the English tongue than with its slang, made a delightful perversion in his 3 0'clock-in-the-morning speech. "The whole cat," he said, "jumped out of the bag at once." That deserves to be catalogued alongside the threat of Mr Barry Pain's waiter to give his employer 'beans in the neck'."
On the 13th December, 1922, the Evening News carried the following item:
M.P.'s ALL NIGHT LIVELINESS - STORMS AND YAWNS IN RELAY RACE
LABOUR'S PLAN
M.P. TALKS OF FIGHTING IN THE STREETS
There then appear photographs of Mr D.Kirkwood and Mr S.Saklatvala
"By deliberate obstruction tactics which a Labour M.P. called 'the new game of Patience' but which the Speaker designated 'a very old game of Patience',the Labour Party kept the House of Commons sitting until 7 minutes to 7 today.
"Lively scenes marked the sitting. 'Scandal!' and 'Shame!' were words in frequent use by Labour M.P.s whose declared intention was to 'keep the House sitting continually until Friday night.'
Mr Kirkwood of the Glasgow Labour M.P.s was particularly trucculent. He advised Labour M.P.s to 'show their contempt for the whole proceedings' and talked of 'fighting in the streets if necessary'.
"A PARSEE ORATION.
Mr Saklatvala talks for an hour on 'Private enterprise'
"The Labour Party set their men to work in relays. The Government, to counter this, resorted to the closure motion every now and again. At 1 a.m. Mr Wheatley, who had been one of the most prominent obstructionists, moved the adjournment of the House. 'I submit,' he said, 'that we have done a fair day's work for a fair day's pay, and have registered a very practical protest against unemployment'
" 'I, being a young man, require some sleep', drowsily remarked Mr Buchanan, as he slowly rose to second the Motion. The House divided and the Motion for adjournment was defeated by 185 to 93.
"The Labour Party then settled down again to their policy of obstruction. They kept the House waiting for an hour for a Supplementary Estimate of £100,000 required for grants to refugees from Ireland, and obstructed the report stage of a Supplementary Army Estimates of £340,000 for the purpose of compensating Officers and others who have suffered from the failure of McGriggor's Bank.
"Mr Ammon, who moved to reduce the sum by £100, complained that no compensation had been paid to working people who had deposited their savings in other banks.
"Mr Saklatvala, the Parsee Labour Member, seized on this opportunity to fire off a solid hour's speech in derision of private enterprise. ......................."
Mr Ammon moved the Amendment and Mr Saklatvala rose to second it.
Mr SAKLATVALA. I beg to second the Amendment.
I must also draw the attention of the House to the principles which are expected to be observed by the constitutional Government or, in fact, by any body of men standing as trustees of public funds, and these principles seem to me to be quite openly violated in this Grant. In the first place, it is an extremely difficult position to charge a body of honourable men with any bad motives or bad intentions, but 'a certain place' and the British House of Commons are both paved with good intentions.........It has been pointed out that there have been other bank failures. The difference between the other bank failures and this bank failure appears to be, as far as one can judge from the Supplementary Estimate, that these are mostly members of the military Service. I put it that, because they are members of the Army service, is the greater reason why the Government should not, on sound principle, make this grant, when in the case of private customers of private banks they have openly refused to do so. After all, is there not a very close connection between the civil Government of the country and the Army that supports the Government and keeps it in its position! This means that the civil Government and the Army which form a close fraternal union in the State, are willing to scratch each others' backs, but they are not acting in the same manner when people lose their money who are not part and parcel of themselves....................
Another principle underlying this Grant appears to me to be almost a startling precedent. Personally, I do not mind that the Members who are in a majority in this House should go to the constituencies a month ago and proclaim the merits of private enterprise, and when they get into power, and when they find themselves and their friends in a very tight corner through the glories of private enterprise, that then they should rush to a scheme of Socialism for safety and emancipation. .............I think it is exceedingly wrong for the Government to trifle with the money of the public in this fashion. If you look at the nature of the Grant itself, what does it mean? It is rewarding those who take part in a swindle, because, after all, though we may sympathise -
Sir A.HOLBROOK: On a point of Order. I think it unfair of the Hon. Member to charge officers of the Army of being concerned in the swindle. That is what I object to. [Hon. Members: "No!"]
Mr SAKLATVALA: When the money disappears, it disappears either through gross negligence or through swindling directly by those who are in control of these moneys. There is not the slightest question in my mind whether one party directly swindles the depositors or another set of swindlers in the way of private enterprise. What I beg to point out, and what I do point out, is that the Government, by this action, are paying a premium on this system of swindling, because we must remember that in private enterprise, as constituted by law, and carried on in an orderly manner, both parties are guilty either of negligence or of encouraging fraud, if not of practicing it. The depositors who deposit their money in a concern and do not make proper investigation as to the nature and soundness of that concern, as to the business ability of the heads of that concern, who are careless of going to that concern from time to time to demand proper accounts and analyse the affairs of that concern, are, themselves, a danger to society and especially, I should say, a danger to society composed of private enterprisers. It is a public duty, if it is not a personal duty, of every depositor in a money concern under a system of private enterprise, which always encourages sharp practice, it is the public duty of every investor to very carefully and analytically search into the conduct and condition of those persons responsible for conducting the industry; and the depositors of this particular concern, having failed in that personal duty as well as that public duty, have themselves been responsible for the very thing which has come to them and their deposits. The Government now comes and says, "Oh, never mind; we are at your back, because most of you are akin to us in your social and in your economic conditions, and because most of you are followers of our politics, we are friends, we are one and the same; we will get you out of the trouble," whereas, the self-same Government and the self-same country once upon a time refused to bring out of trouble a much poorer class and a much poorer set of depositors when they lost their money. But we are told, in a very indirect and vague manner, as if there is some thought of a liability hanging upon the Government, that this bank was something like a double-faced Janus. It turned to the Army officers and said to them, "I am your agent; give me your money." Then it turned to the other side and became a speculative banker, and gambled or did what it pleased with the moneys of the depositors. .............
The Government appointed these people as Army agents, and their appointment was inducive to the depositors going to this particular concern but remaining very careless as to the modes of operation of this concern, thinking that as these were Army agents they would be safe. When it comes to the Ministers that the burden lies upon them, they ought to take some other means of raising this money, themselves or their friends, to defray these losses, but they ought not to touch money belonging to the public. I submit that we, as a Parliament and as a public, should be able to take Ministers to law and make them refund this money. We have heard about private enterprise. This case more than any other distinctly proves that what we know to be private enterprise is certainly private, but is always devoid of the spirit of honest enterprise. Private enterprise appears to me to be that monies and properties belonging to others are dealt with in privacy, the profits accruing therefrom being pocketed by those who call themselves private enterprisers, and when their recklessness or carelessness or inability, or even their dishonesty, brings the whole thing to ruin, the position of the present Government is that the taxpayer is called upon to reimburse the losers. ...................These are Army officers. Had they no Post Office Savings Banks or were they too superior and too rich and aristocratic to go to the savings banks alongside the poor people? If they were too rich or too aristocratic to do that, why did they come with their hats to the British taxpayer? Were these the patriotic gentlemen of Great Britain who were putting their placards and posters on the walls, published and printed from public money, "Put in your 15s. 6d. and it will be 25s. 6d"? Why do not they practice what they preach? Why do they come to this private bank for the deliberate purpose of speculating on a larger scale? All the bait you held out to them did not draw them even when that bait was steeped in the more attractive honey of patriotism. ............
What does that indicate? It distinctly indicates that they had some spare money about which they were not really very much concerned and with which they thought it possible to take a gamble in a so-called bank. It points to the fact that, while the Army itself is underpaid, the Army officers are paid more than was needed for their daily life, and that accounts for the large deposits in a certain concern in which they had no business to deposit any money. Secondly it shows that the Army officers being provided for with more liberal compensation than the old age pensioner gets in this country, were very unconcerned as to what really happened to their savings, and they wanted literally to gamble with it rather than save it in a State Savings Bank. The whole question is that there is no real financial need. This time it is not the failure of the needy and the poor ones; it is not the failure of those who would be dragged to the gutter absolutely in their old age by having lost these fortunes. This is money belonging to a class of officer who evidently, after living fairly well - [An Hon. Member: "How do you know?"] From the fact that the State issued this money. They got it from exactly the same Government that starved the Tommy. They got this money after living on a much higher scale than the ordinary soldier and the ordinary average working-class man of this country, and they were so backed up by a system of pensions and so confident about it that they did not consider it necessary to take the ordinary care and precaution about saving this money for their old age.
............I submit that while they may feel the loss of their money, they cannot be classed with the people rendered destitute by the other failures, people who have now got to pass a hopeless future in their old age without any means of support or livelihood, as was the case with the depositors in the Penny Bank. [Hansard here records that it was 3 a.m.] There is no particular reason, from a financial point of view, for the State to come with public funds and help them to the extent of £340,000 at a time when the Government have no money for the men whose women and children have anxious moments to find a piece of bread for next morning. From a moral point of view, the Government have not made out any particular case for this grant.
..............Considering the moral responsibility of the Government, that it was their own Army agents who had done it, I think that the responsible persons in the Government themselves, with the assistance, if they are too poor, of their rich friends, should have a donation fund, instead of paying compensation from the public funds because of their own negligence in dealing with a party that was not worthy to be dealt with. These are considerations which can go directly against making such a grant from public funds. The Government are not only making the public pay £340,000, but they are not making the public learn a costly lesson. ........ They are also giving a bad example to the Army, which is maintained by the State, by showing by this grant that Army officers are not required to be cautious and thrifty. They are not of the poeple. They are not to go to the State arrangements for saving money in the Post Office banks. They are permitted to gamble. If they make a profit, the profit will be theirs. If they make a loss, the loss will be borne by the taxpayer."
In reply to this peroration, The Financial Secretary to the War _ffice, Lieut.Col.Jackson said: I am sure the hon. Gentlemen who moved and seconded the Reduction will not think me discourteous if I do not reply to their arguments at this particular moment. They will be replied to later in the Debate and I am doubtful if I can reply to all the remarks of the last speaker. I am not sure I could do it in the sunshine and I am quite certain I cannot do it at this late hour...."
Thus ended Saklatvala's first three weeks in the House of Commons; he had certainly already made his mark as a forceful and entertaining contributor to parliamentary debates.